On April 25, Whitehall issued a note through the Chinese Consulate in London "concerning China's sabotage of the security of the Far East shipping routes", claiming that in early 1901, the Chinese Navy brazenly attacked and sank two British warships sailing near the Taiwan Strait, and more than 3,000 British officers and soldiers sank into the sea. Britain demanded that China hand over the murderers of this incident to Britain for trial, including Chinese President Lu Liang, Navy Commander Lu Hai and other high-level Chinese military and political officials; In addition, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and other provinces were ceded as compensation, otherwise China would face British retaliation.

Seeing the poor dagger, the British no longer disdained camouflage, and directly showed the butcher knife. Immediately after that, France, Japan, Russia, and other anti-China allies successively issued "ultimatums" to China under all sorts of bizarre pretexts. Even Japan, which had just been defeated by Hua, made irresponsible remarks on the ruins of Tokyo, and the plaintext telegram from Yuan Shikai from the north completely angered Huaguo.

When the Western powers were weaving a siege net in an attempt to annihilate China, Lu Liang made a speech to all the people of China and forcefully rejected the shameless demands of the West: "The Chinese people are facing the most severe test, and the Western robbers do not want to see the Orientals live a good life. We, the Chinese nation, have endured the bitter days of enslavement and oppression for half a century, and when the dawn finally came, the robbers came to our house again. ”

"They said, 'Lift up your hands, hand up all your possessions, and be enslaved by us under our whips.' Such a request. Will we say yes? Never! Friends come with good wine, jackals come with shotguns! We have 500,000 powerful army brothers, we have hundreds of world-leading warships, our air force controls the sky, and our hundreds of millions of people support the strong backing of the country! ”

"Let's beat the robbers hard. Then he put his foot on the robber's face, pointed a gun at him, and said, 'This is what happened to the robber!' ’”

Of course, you have to be ruthless before the battle, but Lu Liang does have enough confidence to defeat the alliance army, and the accumulation of more than five years has made all fronts perfect, agriculture and industry are organically combined, a large number of resources flow to the army, and all people are united. Make China now unprecedentedly strong. The most important thing is that China has a basically complete industrial system and a transportation system that can make it circulate smoothly, although this system is not perfect, but at least it solves the problem of whether it exists. This allows China to produce any industrial product without any worries, and the output and quality are also improving, which is the benefit of industrialization, if it relies on the steel base alone. It is simply impossible to do this.

On May 1, Wuhan General Staff. The preliminary and perfect battle plan is waiting for Lu Liang's review, the combat units that have been dispatched in advance have been put in place, and the logistics department has also begun to operate in full force, and this battle is likely to turn into a national war, and the war against Japan that has just ended has consumed part of the national strength, with the relatively weak industrial base of China. Whether or not they can withstand a long-term, high-attrition battle is a question, so it is particularly important to gain as much battlefield advantage as possible and shorten the duration of the war.

Lu Liang was also looking at the battle plan in his hand at the Presidential Palace, and being in a high position for a long time made him more and more nostalgic for the office of the Presidential Palace. Every morning in the greetings of subordinates and staff into this office, personally brew a cup of coffee, light a strong cigarette, and then watch Lu Min's graceful figure in front of him wantonly, and finally take over all kinds of documents from her hand, one by one, every time he puts pen to paper, it will cause a series of changes in the outside world. This feeling of being in control of the overall situation makes every cold hair extremely smooth, so in order to continue to maintain this comfort, it is necessary to defeat the interference of Westerners!

First of all, the army took full control of Hubei north of the Yangtze River, and it was expected that there would be no large-scale fighting during this period, and the Beiyang Army had already withdrawn all the troops stationed there to Henan in April in order to avoid the advance of the Chinese army. With Hubei as the bridgehead of the Northern Expedition, it was possible to hoard war materials to the north, east, and west. Then, taking advantage of the contraction of the Beiyang Army and the fact that the Japanese and Russian armies had not yet fully entered the Guannai, they attacked Henan to the north and occupy a strategic advantageous position before the decisive battle with the enemy.

The troops stationed in Taiwan increased to the size of an army, crossed the demarcation line drawn by the San Francisco Treaty, completely drove the Japanese army out of the island of Taiwan, and completely restored its rule over Taiwan. In this way, from the Japanese archipelago to the south to the south of Taiwan, it was under the blockade of the Chinese navy, and the expeditionary fleet had to attack China only from the direction of the South China Sea.

Then there was the Pacific Fleet of China, waiting for a decisive battle with the expeditionary fleet, and the plan of the General Staff was completely prepared for a decisive battle with the expeditionary fleet. It seems that the two super battleships have given Lu Hai full confidence, but Lu Liang doubts that the Pacific Fleet can be safe and sound under the siege of hundreds of warships of the expeditionary fleet. Lu Liang can't afford to lose every battleship in the navy, he doesn't have so much time to wait for the steel base to produce super warships again, and now the function of the steel base has shifted to resource supply, and a rash change of direction will affect the supply of resources to the national economy. The actual shipyard does not yet have the capacity to produce battleships on the scale of the Gotake-class battleships, and according to the construction plan, there are currently two battleships under construction, but they are not Gotake-class battleships.

Even if he has concerns, Lu Liang can't find more faults in military tactics, this is not his own professional category, and he can only believe that the navy will win. Firm belief is also a necessary quality of a leader, is it because of the comfort of office life that you have lost your fighting spirit? It seems that it is time to be active in the sun.

After signing the battle plan, the Sixth Army of the Chinese Army crossed the Yangtze River and entered the area on the north bank of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province, officially marking the beginning of the Second Northern Expedition. Under the condition of being besieged by heavy troops and hostile to various countries, Hua resolutely made the strongest response through the war, not retreating but advancing, and took the lead in attacking the Beiyang Army.

The war preparations for the Second Northern Expedition were nearing completion, and the Chinese army had the ability to send four armies and 200,000 troops across the Yangtze River, and could ensure a smooth enough logistical supply, but it was also a conservative strategy of the General Staff to carry out from the Hubei front, which was to prevent a sudden attack by the Japanese and Russian armies, which would lead to a tight situation on all fronts.

It was impossible for the Bureau of Investigation to obtain all the information, such as the number and establishment of the Japanese and Russian armies that entered the customs from the northeast, but it ignored the morale of the soldiers of the two armies. In order to reduce the logistical pressure and reduce the impact of the war on the country, Nicholas II asked the Far Eastern Military District to recruit new recruits from this side, based on the original 30,000 people, recruit 70,000 new soldiers, and equip them with British and American assistance to form a new Far Eastern Army.

In less than three months, the Far Eastern Military Region could not find 70,000 recruits at all, let alone the establishment and training, and in order to fulfill His Majesty's order of the Emperor, the Military Region even recruited 30,000 Han youths in the northeast to form a special army for the Far East, which was composed entirely of Han Chinese.

After the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian army withdrew its troops on a large scale, and those who were able to return to the Eastern European Plain were all related, backgrounded, and lucky, and the officers and soldiers who stayed in the Northeast were suffering, but they did not expect that the order to return to China was not returned, and what they got was the order to attack again! Even brand-new rifles, ample ammunition, comfortable boots, and delicious rations could not restore the declining morale, from top to bottom, from generals to privates. Therefore, until May 20, when the Chinese army took full control of the whole of Hubei Province, the Russian army had not fully entered Shanhaiguan, and only a cavalry division as the vanguard entered the vicinity of Beijing.

This cavalry division is the trump card of the Far Eastern Military District, the notorious Cossack cavalry, they are different from ordinary Maozi soldiers, they are happy when they hear the battle, and the slaughter of the Orientals is their favorite thing to do, plus they are all cavalry, of course, they move fast.

Compared with the Russians, the Japanese army was assembled and marched more slowly, and according to the requirements of the San Francisco Agreement, only 30,000 troops could be used in the Japanese-occupied area of Liaodong, and the Japanese military department originally wanted to secretly place more soldiers stationed in the Liaodong area, not for military purposes, but for fear that more soldiers would not be able to feed them after returning home. It's just that reality slapped the Japanese hard, the war in the past two years, the war was mainly concentrated on the Liaodong Peninsula to the Mukden line, and the ubiquitous war destroyed countless families, from towns to villages, everywhere were ruins after the war. Lao Maozi and the Japanese devils do not regard the locals as human beings, and burning, killing and looting are not enough to describe their viciousness, or it is more appropriate to say that they are devils.

As a result, these areas are empty, production is devastatingly destroyed, farmland is barren, and hundreds of thousands of troops cannot be fed. In desperation, the Japanese military department could only withdraw most of the troops to the country, and a few months later they had to organize the army to go to Liaodong again. Leaving the troops stationed in various places, the Japanese military headquarters found that only two divisions of troops could be transferred there, which was inconsistent with the agreement of the British, and the dismissed soldiers could only be requisitioned. Come and go, where has the time gone!

The Japanese army, which arrived in Liaodong in the early stage, had two divisions of about 30,000 people, and after receiving British and American equipment and supplies in Lushun, they took the land route, made a detour to the Liaodong Peninsula, and entered the customs through Shanhaiguan. Originally, it was faster and more efficient to use sea transportation, but how could the British and American transport teams have a large number of material transportation tasks, at least the transportation tasks across the entire Pacific Ocean, which made all the captains crazy, where are the ships still dispatched to transport troops? (To be continued.) )